H3G Austria: A Musical Movement Towards Mobile Broadband

Austria is known as a country historically steeped in music. But few might realize that it is also highly developed in mobile communications. Austria has 9.6 million mobile subscribers and a mobile penetration of 120 percent. Hutchison 3G (H3G) is a leading mobile operator in the country. H3G Austria obtained its 3G license in 2000 and began marketing its services in 2003. The company now provides voice and data communications for subscribers nationwide.

H3G Austria's old network equipment could not be upgraded smoothly and was performing poorly. This was seriously affecting user experience, restricting market exploration, and creating operational difficulties. Therefore, H3G Austria set about modernizing their mobile networks, with a view to improving network performance and evolving smoothly to 4G. The ultimate aim of H3G Austria is to build up a profitable mobile broadband network that offers excellent user experience.

Smooth Evolution: A Prelude

After communicating with equipment providers, H3G Austria decided that ZTE's Uni-RAN solution based on SDR technology was an ideal choice for its development plan. The Uni-RAN solution allows for multiband and multimode radio configurations and also supports HSPA+ at 21.6Mbps and DC-HSPA+ at 43.2Mbps through software upgrade. Moreover, it can evolve to LTE by re-using frequency. With the Uni-RAN solution, H3G Austria can quickly enter into the high-performance mobile broadband age, and in the process, enhance its brand image and market competitiveness. In the long run, H3G Austria will save on investment and improve operational efficiency.  

H3G Austria has had a strategic partnership with ZTE since 2010, when it decided to completely upgrade its networks. The campaign involved reconstructing H3G Austria's radio access, core, and bearer networks, with the goal of building up a cutting edge mobile broadband network. ZTE was contracted to provide six years of managed services to H3G Austria, and ensure long-term, stable, high-performance network operation. 

Customization: The High C

In March 2010, H3G Austria chose ZTE as its exclusive supplier for the network reconstruction. The reconstruction is progressing as planned, and by the end of 2011, H3G Austria will have swapped about 4000 base station sites, replaced more than 3000 hops of microwave equipment, and reconstructed its core network. H3G Austria worked with ZTE in defining targets for the project. Several project teams were set up for problem-free logistics, engineering implementation, and quality control. In order to lower network construction costs and shorten the construction period, H3G Austria sought to use existing outdoor cabinets as well as antenna and feeder systems. Customized solutions needed to be devised to make equipment from different manufacturers compatible with each other.

The key to reusing cabinets is to solve the problem of heat dissipation and find space for installation. Given the differences in structural layout and design between new and old base stations, the air ducts in different base stations were incompatible. This meant that if the new base stations were installed in old cabinets, they might not be cooled well enough for reliable long-term operation. 

After carefully surveying the base station sites, ZTE's technical experts came up with a customized solution. Two types of compact base station were selected and modified to match the original cabinets. When totally embedded in the cabinet, these compact base stations were a perfect fit in terms of air ducts and cabling. Results of the field test were satisfying. The customized solution helped H3G Austria shorten their construction period and save CAPEX.  

Reusing antenna and feeder systems was a more challenging task. One of the headaches was to make good use of more than 10,000 tower mounted amplifiers (TMAs) for enhancing radio signals. These TMAs had private protocols and non-standard supervision and power supply. To remove or replace TMAs from the tops of the towers would have cost up to €1000 for each site. If the TMAs were reused, the new base stations would be incapable of energizing or supervising them through standard interfaces. So the TMAs had to be modified. H3G Austria teamed up with ZTE to classify all the TMAs and their corresponding feeder connectors into eight categories. Each type of TMAs had its own connectors and cables. In this way, all TMAs in the network could be reused, which saved up to €10 million in labour costs. Customization is therefore considered the high C of H3G Austria's musical movement towards mobile broadband.

Rapid Deployment: A March Towards Mobile Broadband

Mobile multimedia business is booming in Austria. This provides opportunities for H3G to achieve major breakthroughs in the market. The operator required more than 1100 sites in key areas to be swapped by the end of 2010 and network modernization to be completed by 2011. With its professional project delivery teams and custom-made solutions, ZTE succeeded in swapping and commercializing 1336 sites at the end of 2010 and 2600 sites in May 2011, which was far ahead of schedule.

The performance of the new network has been significantly improved. On June 2, 2011, H3G Austria and ZTE released independent test results showing the LTE/DC-HSPA+ network to be the fastest in Austria, with the widest coverage. Jan Trionow, CEO of H3G Austria, presented results of network evaluation analyses based on the measurements done with speedtest.net, a reliable tool to test internet connection speed. These results indicate that H3G's network has higher throughput for download and upload than any of its competitor's networks in Austria. Network capacity has increased ten times that of the previous network, and data throughput of the entire network has doubled. ZTE's Uni-RAN solution supports LTE/DC-HSPA+ integrated networking, which enables efficient network upgrades and reduces TCO. The solution meets increasing user requirements for mobile bandwidth and multimedia services.

The whole project is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2011. H3G is the first operator in Austria to build a nationwide LTE/DC-HSPA+ network that will cover 94% of the country's population with HSPA+ services and provide LTE services in major cities. H3G Austria is poised to offer leading mobile broadband services and improve user lifestyles.